Weekly Market Preview
Friday, Oct 27, 2023
At its latest meeting, the European Central Bank, as anticipated, decided to maintain interest rates unchanged at 4%. However, there was no explicit clarification on the potential strategy of not reinvesting the maturing PEPP bonds in the upcoming year.
The ECB President Christine Lagarde did mention that this matter hadn’t been discussed, but she emphasized that the central bank’s monetary policy is closely linked to European inflation levels. This statement effectively left the possibility of interest rate hikes at any time on the table. She also made it clear that contemplating interest rate cuts was far too premature.
This approach by the ECB is expected to be mirrored by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. It is anticipated that the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged at its meeting and reiterate its alignment of monetary policy with US inflation trends. This sentiment is likely to echo at the Bank of England’s meeting this week.
The focus in the current week is on a series of influential economic data, with the US jobs data report for October taking centre stage. This report will provide deeper insights into the state of the US labour market. The market expects the US economy to have added 172,000 jobs in October. Any figure falling below this expectation would be reassuring for investors, as it would suggest a potential slowdown in the current strength of the labour market.